McMahon to release list of delegates on her payroll

Neil Vigdor

Published 11:50 pm, Thursday, March 29, 2012

Like her chief competitor in the Republican nominating race for U.S. Senate, Linda McMahon is pledging to release the list of GOP convention delegates who are on her campaign's payroll as staff or vendors.

The roster will be available to the state party 48 hours before the May 18 convention in Hartford, according to an email to supporters Wednesday from McMahon's campaign manager, Corry Bliss.

McMahon's decision to name names came exactly one week after former U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays made a similar pledge to share his roster with the party, as well as to require those delegates serving in dual capacities as campaign staff or vendors to wear badges on the convention floor.

"I'd love to see them do that. But it was conspicuously absent from their pledge regarding the convention," said Amanda Bergen, a spokeswoman for Shays, of the McMahon campaign pledge.

Both campaigns traded barbs Wednesday on the issue, with the Shays contingent characterizing McMahon as slow to embrace disclosure measures and McMahon's surrogates accusing the opposition of trying to divert attention from substantive issues of the race such as unemployment.

State Republican Chairman Jerry Labriola Jr. characterized the two GOP frontrunners as fully receptive to efforts to promote transparency at the convention, despite the party's reluctance to adopt formal rules applying to delegates.

The Republican State Central Committee earlier this month overwhelmingly declined to refer a proposed disclosure policy for delegates to the rules committee of the upcoming convention.

The rationale among those in opposition was that they were tangled in legalese and difficult to enforce for a party whose mantra is that less regulation is better. "Transparency is paramount to ensuring a fair and open nominating process," Labriola said. "I am confident we will hold the most open and transparent convention in state history on May 18."

In his letter to McMahon's supporters, Bliss accused Shays of hypocrisy, saying that his campaign employs both a Republican Town Committee chairman and state representative.

Bliss stood by his criticism of Shays in an interview.

"Our campaign will not employ elected officials, whether they be a first selectman, mayor, state rep or RTC chairman," Bliss said.

Bergen identified the paid staffers as Bob Zappi, Westport's RTC chairman and Shays' fundraising consultant; and state Rep. Penny Bacchiochi, R-Somers, who is Shays' field coordinator in the 2nd Congressional District.

State Rep. Brenda Kupchick, R-Fairfield, also served as a paid scheduler for Shays until the start of the current legislative session in the General Assembly, according to Bergen.

"Nothing secret there," Bergen said.

The Shays campaign questioned McMahon's motives for making the pledge and for trumpeting the results of an internal poll Tuesday that showed the former WWE chief executive with a nearly 20-point lead in the GOP primary race.

McMahon's internal numbers contrast with a recent Quinnipiac University poll that showed a narrowing of the gap between McMahon and Shays from 15 to 9 points. The Q-poll also showed Shays in a dead heat with Democrat Chris Murphy in a hypothetical general election match-up, with McMahon trailing Murphy by 15 points.

"The fact that they're doing some name-calling just shows that they see the race slipping away and they're trying to stop the bleeding," Bergen said.